“I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a very unusual experience today,” he said cryptically.
A puzzled Rachel Mussolini got into her limousine and rode off. A few miles beyond the city limits her chauffeur encountered an unexpected traffic jam. Cars were backed up for miles. Cursing, gesticulating drivers were opening the hoods of their cars and studying their suddenly sullen engines.
“What’s happening here?” Madame Mussolini demanded.
“It looks as if everyone is breaking down at once,” her driver began. “I—”
His own motor coughed and died. He coasted to the edge of the road.
“I can’t understand why.”
Several minutes passed. Then, just as suddenly, all the stalled autos roared to life again. There was a universal shrugging of shoulders as the fuming drivers got back into their vehicles and continued to Ostia.
The incident was widely noted in the press at the time. And at the close of World War II the Italian press revived the story, adding that the multiple automobile stallings had been caused by sinister secret experiments conducted by none other than Guglielmo Marconi, one of the great geniuses of the twentieth century. He had been working on a “death ray” for Mussolini, the papers claimed, and when he refused to turn the finished product over to the dictator in 1937, he met with a sudden death.
Thirty years after the original incident, it was revived once again by one of ufology’s characters, a man who called himself Mel Noel. Mr. Noel surfaced in 1965-66 during the great UFO wave of the period. He claimed to be a former Air Force pilot who had some unusual experiences with flying saucers in the 1950s. He was an exceptionally handsome man, seemingly sincere and with great charisma, who wore expensive clothes, stayed in the best hotels, and traveled in the company of a number of beautiful young ladies. According to his story, a group of great scientists had gone into seclusion somewhere deep in South America where, under the guidance of the wonderful space people, they had constructed a number of workable flying saucers, which they planned to use for the good of mankind—naturally. He backed his tale with frayed clippings of Marconi’s alleged experiments. Marconi was one of the first to stumble on the secrets of the universe after contacting the space people in the 1920s. Instead of being turned over to Mussolini, his notes and apparatus were smuggled out of Italy before the war, according to Noel, presumably reaching the hands of the secret scientific combine in Brazil.
Noel expected to prove his claims with a spectacular demonstration. He had arranged for a flying saucer to land on the outdoor TV set of the Jackie Gleason Show broadcast from Florida. A selected group of reporters and scientists would be taken aboard, he said, and given a free ride to neighboring planets. Mr. Noel traveled about the country recruiting passengers. Each reporter was asked to supply two photographs for his interplanetary passport. Noel did not try to solicit money from anyone. How he financed his adventures remains a mystery.
Needless to say, the UFO failed to land on the Gleason set on the appointed day. Mel Noel disappeared back into the cosmic woodwork.
The basic Noel story is, of course, very similar to H.G. Wells’s imaginative creation in Things To Come. Wells saw a band of scientists and humanitarians fleeing from our war-torn civilization to establish a “Wings Over the World” group (W.O.W.) to preserve human knowledge and eventually to restore the world.
For years, I viewed the seemingly nonsensical Sunday supplement stories about Marconi with skepticism, even cynicism. But now I must eat crow—a recurring dish at my table, alas—for a large part of this ridiculous story is true.
Marconi was a short, slender, austere man with pointed, ascetic features and the eyes of a dreamer. Born in 1874, he was world famous at the age of 23 and had received the Nobel Prize and many other honors by the time he was 35.
We knew virtually nothing about electromagnetic propagation when Marconi began his first wireless experiments in the 1890s. Those early efforts were confined to what are called long waves. Today we know that the electromagnetic spectrum is made up of many frequencies stretching from very low frequencies (VLF), composed of very long radio waves, to the very tiny pulses or short waves (called “shortwaves”) of gamma rays and cosmic rays at the other end of the spectrum. About halfway along this spectrum there is the frequency which produces visible light. We can only see a minute portion of the entire spectrum. Shortwaves were unknown for years, as were the even shorter microwaves.
Imagine the EM spectrum laid our something like your radio dial. The various radio stations in your vicinity are tuned to slightly different frequencies. That is, their individual signals are broadcast on beams of electricity pulsing at shorter or longer lengths than neighboring stations. A simple device known as a condenser, consisting of a series of rotating metal plates, sorts out these frequencies for you when you tune your set. So you are able to tune into any frequency along the dial, from the relatively short pulses at the far end of the dial to the somewhat longer frequencies at the other end.
Now the whole EM spectrum is infinitely longer than the tiny segment scanned by your radio tuner. Waves are measured by their length; the basic wave being named hertz after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz who discovered them. One hertz is one cycle or pulse per second. One thousand cycles is a kilohertz, or kilocycle.
You know that the light bulb by which you are reading this book is actually pulsing 60 times per second or 50 cycles. This is a very low frequency. Your hi-fi set, telephone, electric hair drier, and electric toothbrush are also operating in the very low frequency range. If your electric company tried to pipe current to you at, say, 1,500 cycles per second, it wouldn’t reach you because it would escape from the wires into the air like a radio signal.
When your next-door neighbor uses his electric shaver while you are watching your favorite TV show, he creates interference across a broad range of the spectrum and disrupts the steady cycling of your house current. On the other hand, when an airplane flies over your house, it cuts a swath through the high-frequency signals reaching your antenna and gives you a momentary problem.
A construction of the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum looks like figure 2.
At first scientists believed that shortwaves were useless for broadcast purposes. Long waves were the only proven medium, and many of the self-styled experts who materialized after Marconi’s first successes soberly predicted that not even long waves would follow the curvature of the earth to make long-distance radio possible. In 1901 Marconi proved his detractors wrong when he sent a message across the Atlantic.
Shortwaves, and the very short microwaves, remained in disrepute for several years thereafter. During World War I, several governments began to experiment with VLF—the very long waves at the bottom of the spectrum. They found that such waves would not only travel great distances, but that they would even penetrate water. However, VLF posed many other problems and was temporarily abandoned after the war.
In 1921 Marconi held a press conference and made one of the most sensational statements of his career. For several years, he said, his company’s receiving stations had been intercepting mysterious organized signals low on the long-wave band. Investigations had failed to pinpoint their source. It was his studied opinion that these phantom transmissions were coming from outer space!
Today we know that the VLF band is haunted by all kinds of inexplicable sounds and signals as well as electromagnetic pulses generated by atomic tests, rocket launches, sun spots, and mundane natural phenomena.
Marconi turned his attention to the other end of the spectrum in the 1920s, experimenting with shortwaves and microwaves and opening a Pandora’s box of electronic surprises. He even foresaw radar in a speech in New York on June 20, 1922.
As was first shown by Hertz, electric waves can be completely reflected by conducting bodies. In some of my tests I have noticed the effects of reflection and deflection of these waves by metallic objects miles away.
It seems to me that it should be possible to
design apparatus by means of which a ship could radiate or project a divergent beam of these rays in any desired direction, which rays, if coming across a metallic obstacle, such as another steamer or ship, would be reflected back to a receiver screened from the local transmitter on the sending ship, and thereby immediately reveal the presence and bearing of the other ship in fog or thick weather. One further great advantage of such an arrangement would be that it would be able to give warning of the presence and bearing of ships, even should these ships be unprovided with any kind of radio.
Modern radar operates on the basic principle laid down by Marconi in 1922. He did not pursue the idea himself until shortly before his death, because he was too involved in his rapidly growing international corporation and in the development of shortwave radio.
Believe it or not, an incident at the Vatican in Rome led to his renewed interest in radar.
In 1930 Marconi built a powerful shortwave station in the Vatican, giving Pius XI the means for communicating with the entire world. Three years later one of the Vatican radio operators reported receiving “something like the sizzle produced by someone walking across slushy ground.”[3] In the days that followed he was baffled to pick up this same sound again and again, always at the same time. One afternoon he looked out the window of his radio shack as the sound was flashing from his headphones, and he saw a workman pushing a wheelbarrow across the yard, apparently cutting through the radio beams being transmitted. The shortwaves were striking the metal wheelbarrow and bouncing back.
It was not until 1935 that Marconi turned his full attention to this interesting effect. He didn’t know it, but that same year a group of British scientists headed by Robert A. Watson-Watt were also secretly working with microwaves and the radar effect. They would perfect it during the last days of peace, and their radar stations would be instrumental in saving England from the Luftwaffe in 1940.
Benito Mussolini rose to power in 1922, but Marconi was cautious in accepting and endorsing the noisy little Socialist who somehow managed to make the trains run on time. He waited three years before he responded to il Duce’s overtures. By 1935, Marconi was regarded as one of Italy’s (and humanity’s) greatest men. He was fundamentally apolitical, a man of science with a great moral conscience. When he began his work with the radar effect, he informed Mussolini of his project. Impressed and enthused and undoubtedly realizing the military value, Mussolini summoned his aides and announced: “Give this man anything he wants. Anything. If he wants the whole Italian navy to maneuver for him, order it.”
Marconi’s requests were more modest. He asked for military planes to fly back and forth over his laboratory outside of Rome while he tried to bounce microwave beams off them.
During his early experiments in 1935-36, he made a horrifying discovery. His microwaves were apparently killing animals near his laboratory. The local farmers were naturally perturbed, and rumors spread that the great inventor was indulging in black magic.
Mussolini was, of course, delighted. Marconi had invented a “death ray,” something every dictator could use. Keep working on it, he ordered.
But Marconi was not in the death-ray business. This was just an unfortunate side effect of microwaves. He saw radar as a means of saving ships, planes, lives. So he returned his primitive apparatus. If microwaves were dangerous, then perhaps he should shift his attention to the other end of the spectrum, the very low frequencies, and see if VLF waves could be used. This led to another startling discovery. While ultrahigh frequencies (UHF) bounced off metallic objects, VLF waves penetrated and affected electrical devices, overloaded circuits, and caused machines like generators and electric motors to freeze. In short, the waves stalled automobiles. Diesel engines, on the other hand, were immune to the VLF effect because they did not depend on electrical ignition.
We can only imagine Mussolini’s reaction when Marconi told him the bad news of another “failure.” VLF was no good because it wouldn’t bounce back; it would only stall engines. The dictator probably turned handsprings. Not only had his inventor stumbled onto a death ray, now he had found a way to paralyze enemy machines!
Like it or not, Marconi found himself developing devices that were contrary to all his humanitarian principles. He must have suffered a great conflict of conscience.
In 1937, his health began to fail. He suffered a series of heart attacks. But he struggled on with his experiments and decided on a course of action. On July 17, 1937, he had a private audience with the pope. Years later his daughter Degna wrote:
What they talked about no one will ever know. It was said that Father wanted to give the Pontiff news of recent developments in wireless. That could have waited. I am convinced that Father was impelled by more personal and pressing motives. He was on the threshold of a new life. As he made clear to me, he had decided to live alone and to transfer himself and his work to England, despite his abiding love of his own country.
Had Marconi learned of the British experiments with radar? Did he want to flee his odious obligations to the Italian dictator? He set up a meeting with Mussolini for July 20, three days after his papal audience. Did he plan to tell il Duce that he intended to abandon his experiments and leave the country? In any case, the July 20 meeting never took place. Marconi suffered a massive heart attack and died at 3:45 that morning.
What happened to Marconi’s notes on his experiments and his apparatus is not known. Certainly Mussolini would have tried to confiscate them and have others continue his work. Perhaps the inventor destroyed everything shortly before he died. It is even possible that the pope suggested he destroy all evidence of his “terrible” experiments. Italy did not pioneer in the development of radar (although Germany perfected it quickly in the early days of the war).
A quaint footnote belongs to this story. On January 23, 1950, the Los Angeles Daily Mirror carried a piece by Dick Williams captioned, “Did 15-year-old Boy Happen on Secret of Flying Saucers?” Williams claimed that in 1941 a boy in Appleton, Wisconsin, was experimenting with amateur radio when he “accidentally hit on the wavelength of magnetic frequency and every time he dialed this frequency he shorted every motor-driven vehicle using the ignition system for a radius of three miles.” Williams claimed he checked with the Appleton airport and found that airplanes were also “shorted” when they flew over the boy’s house.
I recently asked researchers in Wisconsin to try to check out this story for me, but over thirty years have passed and no substantive information was uncovered. However it is quite possible that a boy fiddling with VLF could have inadvertently repeated Marconi’s discovery.
Chester L. Swital, a Chicago newspaperman, is supposed to have visited Appleton to cover the story in 1941. But when he reached Appleton, “he found the place crawling with F.B.I. men. They confiscated the boy’s short-wave set and shipped him, his family, and the mystifying radio to Washington for further study.”[4]
This is just one of the many “displaced family” rumors in the UFO lore. In more modern episodes, whole families have allegedly disappeared after military trucks appeared on their property to load up all their belongings. In one case investigated by Ivan Sanderson’s colleagues in Pennsylvania, even the water faucets were supposedly removed from the sinks! In others the families are said to have vanished after some member (usually a child) was burned or mysteriously injured by an unidentified flying object. In 1967 a farm family in New Jersey was rumored to have been carted away in Air Force trucks after a strange object landed on their property. In another, a teen-aged boy who took photos of a grounded UFO in Virginia in 1965 was allegedly rushed off into limbo in a government limousine a few days later.
However, stories of this sort can be traced back to the 1800s when basement tinkerers were still working on perpetual motion machines. Several yarns of this type appeared in the 1920s, the most famous one concerning the inventor who found a way to make automobile engines run on water. Where is he now that we really need him?
5
“It sm
elled worse than rotten eggs…more like burning flesh,” D. S. “Sonny” Desvergers, a scoutmaster in Florida, declared in 1952 after a frightening encounter with a glowing circular object. While three boys from his troop had watched from a distance, Desvergers had cautiously approached the object and had been knocked unconscious by a ball of fire coming from it. The hair on his forearms was singed, and three small holes were burned in his cap. Capt. Edward Ruppelt, then chief of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, investigated the case personally and discovered that the roots of the grass at the alleged UFO landing site were mysteriously scorched while the grass above ground was unharmed. This weird effect has been found at other UFO sites since then.
In recent years, microwave ovens have gained popularity. Early models were not too successful because microwaves heat substances from the inside out. A piece of hamburger treated with microwaves can be raw on the outside and done to a turn in the center. Apparently the grass in Florida was subjected to microwave radiation.
The UFO lore abounds with cases in which objects and people were cooked by microwaves. One of the first incidents of this sort resulted in tragedy in 1954 and was heavily publicized by a popular flying-saucer writer of the period, Donald E. Keyhoe. Two Air Force pilots were purportedly pursuing a UFO over Walesville, New York, when a sudden, unbearable heat filled the cockpit of their F-94 jet. They were forced to bail out, and their plane crashed into the little town, killing four people, two of them children. Although the story made headlines, the UFO aspect was played down or even totally ignored in most accounts.
Motorists in closed cars often experience a rapid rise of temperature when a UFO hovers nearby. Their vehicles literally act like a microwave oven. People standing in the open can be exposed to both actinic rays and microwaves and get their pants burned off. Dep. Sheriff A. H. Perkins and Patrolman C. F. Bell had this happen to them near Williston, Florida in December 1955. They said their clothes became intolerably hot and their limbs were virtually paralyzed as the objects (six of them) passed low over their location.
THE EIGHTH TOWER: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum Page 4